The Asian Australian Lawyers Association and Maddocks are pleased to officially announce the launch of the William Ah Ket Scholarship 2019.

The William Ah Ket Scholarship is an annual scholarship of $6,000 to be awarded to the applicant who produces the most outstanding research paper on a topic dealing with equality, diversity and the legal profession or law. There is also a prize of $1,000 each for the authors of two shortlisted papers.

An initiative of the Asian Australian Lawyers Association and sponsored by law firm Maddocks, the scholarship is designed to recognise the historical contribution of William Ah Ket to the legal profession as the first Asian Australian barrister in Australia.

The William Ah Ket scholarship is aimed at lawyers with no more than five years post admission experience, law graduates currently undertaking a legal professional practice course or a legal traineeship, and final year law students who have had not less than 4 weeks’ legal work experience.

To apply for the William Ah Ket scholarship, applicants will need to submit an unpublished paper of no more than 5,000 words (including footnotes, appendices and tables) on a topic dealing with equality, diversity and the legal profession or law, by 9 August 2019.

In 2019, the judging panel for the William Ah Ket Scholarship will be:

1.The Honourable Joshua Wilson, Justice of the Family Court of Australia

The AALA established the William Ah Ket Scholarship in 2017 to foster the development and promotion of cultural diversity in the legal profession.

The scholarship is named after William Ah Ket, the son of Chinese migrants who was admitted to practice in Victoria in 1903. William completed his articled clerkship at Maddock & Jamieson (now Maddocks) before signing the Victorian Bar roll in 1904. He practised as a barrister until his death in 1936.

William is believed to be the first person of Chinese background to practise as a barrister in Australia.

The William Ah Ket Scholarship has been devised by the Asian Australian Lawyers Association and is proudly sponsored by Maddocks.

"Winning the inaugural William Ah Ket Scholarship brings me great pride and satisfaction, owing to the scholarship’s underlying purpose of fostering the development and promotion of cultural diversity in the Australian legal profession. As with other aspects of diversity, a crucial facet of achieving cultural diversity stems from the creation of awareness of the issue(s). The scholarship is a wonderful platform to raise such awareness by bringing to light systemic factors impeding the attainment of cultural diversity within the profession. I am certain the continuity of this scholarship will of itself be precedential in improving cultural diversity within the profession."

Last year, Kelvin Ng and Ming Kalanon, then graduate lawyers co-authored the winning paper ‘What does parity in cultural diversity look like?’. Their paper looked at cultural diversity by focusing on Asian Australians in the legal profession and discusses the need and business case for cultural diversity, before focusing on how cultural diversity is measured.

Testimonial by Kelvin and Ming:

“Our essay aimed to explore the concepts of race, culture and ethnicity, and ultimately, “What does parity in cultural diversity look like?”. In writing our essay, we drew inspiration from the legacy of William Ah Ket himself and his remarkable, trailblazing career, forged in the face of adversity. We feel incredibly privileged to have been afforded a platform to contribute to the literature and discourse about cultural diversity, and are confident that William Ah Ket’s story will continue to inspire future generations to aspire towards parity – whatever that means.”

To read the papers of the past winners and the runners up, please click here.

WILLIAM AH KET

‘William Ah Ket did not ever sit on the Bench, though he would have been a very competent judge. He was a phenomenon at the Victorian Bar, a full-blooded Chinese born in the north-east of Victoria. He was a sound lawyer and a good advocate.’ – Sir Robert Menzies, barrister and Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister.

The story of William Ah Ket is a significant one in the history of the Australian legal profession.

William was born in the Victorian country town of Wangaratta in 1876, the son of Mah Ket, who arrived from Canton during the gold rush, and his wife Hing Ung.

Fulfilling his father’s wishes, William studied law at the University of Melbourne. While there he won a prize of 40 pounds from the Supreme Court in 1902. He served his articles under Richard Cross of the firm then known as Maddock & Jamieson (now Maddocks) in 1903.

He joined the Victorian Bar in 1904, reading with Stewart McArthur – who later went on to be a Supreme Court judge – and became the first Chinese barrister to practise in Melbourne. He is also believed to be the first Chinese barrister to practise in Australia.

William was well regarded as a barrister. He specialised in civil law and acquired a considerable reputation as a negotiator of settlements.

A report in the Victorian Bar News of Winter 1984 records that he enjoyed “an excellent general practice” and “was recognised as an able cross-examiner with a superb command of language”.

However, as Sir Robert Menzies, who was a friend and practised with Mr Ah Ket in Selbourne Chambers, observed “[a] certain prejudice among clients against having a Chinese barrister to an extent limited his practice”.

Despite this, between 1905 and 1928, he appeared before the High Court on at least 12 occasions. This included a number of cases, Bishop v Chung Brothers, Potter v Minahan and Ingham v Hie Lee, that involved challenges to legislation that discriminated against those of Chinese origin. Indeed, as his daughter Toylaan noted in a paper on her father, this was an issue that he was passionate about, having been involved in forming a committee to agitate against the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and the unreasonable conditions imposed, such as the infamous dictation test.

William was a member of the Chinese Empire Reform Association of 1904 and the Anti-Opium League of Victoria, organisations which supported modernisation and social reform among Chinese at home and abroad. He was also a delegate to the first interstate Chinese convention held at Melbourne in 1905 and was co-founder and president of the Sino-Australian Association, considered to be the first Australian-Chinese club.

He visited China in 1912-13 as the delegate of the Victorian Chinese Chamber of Commerce to participate in the election of overseas Chinese to the new parliament of the Republic. He was also the acting consul-general for China in 1913-14 and in 1917.